Intel® Optane™ Solid State Drives
Support for Issues Related to Solid State Drives based on Intel® Optane™ technology, Intel® MAS and Firmware Update Tool
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Cannot format DC P3600 SSD with isdct..

Yoinah1M
Beginner
2,522 Views

I have the following SSD in my server:

# isdct show -intelssd 0

- Intel SSD DC P3600 Series PHMD5485003S400FGN -

Bootloader : 8B1B0133
DevicePath : /dev/nvme0n1
DeviceStatus : Healthy
Firmware : 8DV101H0
FirmwareUpdateAvailable : The selected drive contains current firmware as of this tool release.
Index : 0
ModelNumber : INTEL SSDPE2ME400G4
ProductFamily : Intel SSD DC P3600 Series
SerialNumber : PHMD5485003S400FGN

 

As you can see, I was able to update the firmware. And the SSD works fine as a SSD, but it currently has 4K sectors and I want to change it to 512b sectors. So, when I try to do that with isdct, I run into a problem with a message that isn't very helpful:

# isdct start -intelssd 0 -nvmeformat -namespace 1 LBAFormat=0
WARNING! You have selected to format the drive! 
Proceed with the format? (Y|N): Y
Formatting...(This can take several minutes to complete)

- Intel SSD DC P3600 Series PHMD5485003S400FGN -

Status : NVMe command reported a problem.

# echo $?
25

 

What is wrong here? And how do I fix it?

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15 Replies
JosafathB_Intel
Moderator
2,492 Views

Hello Yoinah1M,

 

Thank you for contacting Intel® Memory and Storage support.

 

As we understand, you need assistance with an error related to your Intel® SSD DC P3600 Series. If we infer correctly, we will appreciate it if you can review the following information:

 

- Please use the Intel® Memory and Storage Tool CLI (Command-Line Interface) https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/29917/Intel-Memory-and-Storage-Tool-CLI-Command-Line-Interface-  to set your “Physical Sector Size” as stated in section 2 of the User Guide (https://downloadmirror.intel.com/29917/eng/Intel_Memory_And_Storage_Tool_CLI_User%20Guide-Public-342245-005US.pdf)

 

PhysicalSectorSize:

 set [-help|-h] [-output|-o (text|nvmxml|json)] -intelssd (Index|SerialNumber) PhysicalSectorSize =

(512|4096)

 

We hope you find this information helpful, and please let us know if you need further assistance.

 

Best regards,

 

Josh B.

Intel® Customer Support Technician

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Yoinah1M
Beginner
2,484 Views

@JosafathB_Intel  That "set" command is for SATA only. The DC P3600 is a NVMe drive.... I'm suppose to be able to use -NvmeFormat command.... I've done it on other P3600 drives successfully in the past, just not this one with the latest firmware. Do you know if there's a bug to the latest firmware that prevents the NVMe format? Is it possible to downgrade the firmware to a previous version to avoid this problem?

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JosafathB_Intel
Moderator
2,472 Views

Hello Yoinah1M,

 

Thank you for your reply.

 

Let us further investigate your inquiry related to your Intel® SSD DC P3600 Series.

 

We will contact you back as soon as we have an answer or in case further information is required.

 

Best regards,

 

Josh B.
Intel® Customer Support Technician

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JosafathB_Intel
Moderator
2,464 Views

Hello Yoinah1M,

 

Thank you for your patience.

 

We tried to reproduce the issue you are reporting in our lab, and we were able to change the SectorDataSize by following these steps:

 

1- Intelmas show -intelssd X 

 

*Substitute X for your SSD number* In my case is 4

 

Intelmas show -intelssd 4

 

Bootloader :

Capacity : 360.08 GB

CurrentPercent : 90.00

DevicePath : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE4

DeviceStatus : Healthy

FirmwareUpdateAvailable : The selected drive contains current firmware as of this tool release.

Index : 4

MaximumLBA : 87910060

ModelNumber : INTEL

ProductFamily : Intel SSD DC P

SMARTEnabled : True

SectorDataSize : 4096

SerialNumber :

 

 

2- Intelmas delete -force -intelssd 4

Deleting...(This can take several minutes to complete)

 

- Intel SSD DC P

 

Status : Delete successful.

 

 

3- Intelmas start -intelssd 4 -NVMeFormat LBAformat=0 SecureEraseSetting=0 ProtectionInformation=0 MetaDataSettings=0

WARNING! You have selected to format the drive!

Proceed with the format? (Y|N): y

Formatting...(This can take several minutes to complete)

 

- Intel SSD DC P -

 

Status : NVMeFormat successful.

 

 

4- Intelmas show -intelssd 4

 

- Intel SSD DC P -

 

Bootloader :

Capacity : 360.08 GB

CurrentPercent : 90.00

DevicePath : \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE4

DeviceStatus : Healthy

Firmware :

FirmwareUpdateAvailable : The selected drive contains current firmware as of this tool release.

Index : 4

MaximumLBA : 703280490

ModelNumber : INTEL SSDP

ProductFamily : Intel SSD DC P

SMARTEnabled : True

SectorDataSize : 512

SerialNumber :

 

We do apologize since the previous commands are applicable for SATA drives and would not work with the NVMe drives.

 

For further information, visit the following article:

 

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000016238/memory-and-storage/data-center-ssds.html

 

To answer your questions:

 

1- Do you know if there's a bug to the latest firmware that prevents the NVMe format?

 

  • We do not have any reports of issues with the latest firmware on this SSD family.

 

2- Is it possible to downgrade the firmware to a previous version to avoid this problem?

 

  • We do not have any report of issues or problems with the latest firmware on this SSD family, and by using our tools is not possible to do a firmware downgrade (we do not support or recommend to do a firmware downgrade on any of our SSDs).

 

Take into consideration that the namespaces are not supported on these SSD as stated in the following Article:

 

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000038017/memory-and-storage/data-center-ssds.html

 

Best regards,

 

Josh B.

Intel® Customer Support Technician

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Yoinah1M
Beginner
2,462 Views

please look at my first post. i did the same command, but i got an error.

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JosafathB_Intel
Moderator
2,455 Views

Hello Yoinah1M,

 

Thank you for your reply.

 

Please follow the steps I shared in my previous post and run the command by using Intel® MAS instead of Intel® DCT.


Run the commands as I share them, and do not modify any of them.


The only difference will be the SSD number that instead of 4 in your case may be X number.

 

If you experience any issue after running these commands, provide us with screenshots showing the command and the command output to analyze it.

 

In addition to the screenshots, we will need the following information:

 

- We would like to know how many Intel® SSD DC P3600 Series units you have in total and how many of those are affected by this issue.

 

- Please extract the following logs by using the Intel® Memory and Storage Tool:

 

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/29917/Intel-Memory-and-Storage-Tool-CLI-Command-Line-Interface-

 

-1. SMART attributes: intelmas show -smart -intelssd “SSD_index”.

-2. The SSD information using show -all command from Intel MAS CLI: intelmas show -all -intelssd “SSD_index”

Replace the “SSD_index” with the actual index number of your SSD.

 

-We need you to provide us with the system details by extracting the SSU logs and the replication steps to try to determine the root cause.

 

The SSU logs.

 

1- Go to https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25293/ (for Windows*) and to https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/26735/ (for Linux) download the software.
2- When you finish downloading it, open it.
3- Attach the file generated by the tool in your reply.

 

We are looking forward to your reply.

 

Best regards,

 

Josh B.
Intel® Customer Support Technician
A Contingent Worker at Intel®

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JosafathB_Intel
Moderator
2,434 Views

Hello Yoinah1M,

 

Greetings from; Intel® Memory and Storage support.

 

We were reviewing your community thread, which is related to your Intel® SSD DC P3600 Series. We would like to know if you were able to check our previous post and if you were able to get the information we requested.

 

We are going to follow up with you again next Friday, the 13th of November 2020, if we do not receive an answer from you.

 

We will be looking forward to your reply.

 

Best regards,

 

Josh B.
Intel® Customer Support Technician

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Yoinah1M
Beginner
2,426 Views

@JosafathB_Intel Thanks for following up. I saw your message, but I haven't used the intelmas tool before, so I need a little time to get that tool setup. I'm also working on another project this week, so I won't be able to get to try your suggested procedure until the weekend.

When I searched, I was referred to the isdct tool instead, is the intelmas tool suppose to replace the isdct tool?

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JosafathB_Intel
Moderator
2,421 Views

Hello Yoinah1M,

 

Thank you for your reply.

 

To answer your question:

 

- Is the intelmas tool suppose to replace the isdct tool?

 

Yes, the Intel® Memory and Storage Tool (CLI) is the newest tool that is replacing the Intel® DCT.

 

Please, take your time with this process and let us know the results. We are going to follow up with you again next Friday, the 20th of November 2020, if we do not receive an answer from you.

 

Best regards,

 

Josh B.
Intel® Customer Support Technician.

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JosafathB_Intel
Moderator
2,396 Views

Hello Yoinah1M,

 

Greetings from; Intel® Memory and Storage support.

 

We were reviewing your community thread, which is related to your Intel® SSD DC P3600 Series. We would like to know if you were able to get the information we requested.

 

We are going to follow up with you again next Tuesday, the 24th of November 2020, if we do not receive an answer from you. Please let me know if you would like to schedule a different date for the follow-up.

 

We will be looking forward to your reply.

 

Best regards,

 

Josh B.

Intel® Customer Support Technician

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JosafathB_Intel
Moderator
2,383 Views

Hello Yoinah1M,

 

Greetings from; Intel® Memory and Storage support.

 

We were reviewing your community thread, which is related to your Intel® SSD DC P3600 Series., and we have not heard back from you in a while, so we will proceed to close this inquiry now.

 

If you need assistance with an Intel® product, please open a new thread.

 

Best regards,

 

Josh B.

Intel® Customer Support Technician

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Yoinah1M
Beginner
2,378 Views

Hi @JosafathB_Intel sorry been super busy, but I actually scheduled some time to try out the procedure you described. I'll get back to you on the outcome later today.

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Yoinah1M
Beginner
2,375 Views

@JosafathB_Intel  Just a quick update... I installed the Intel MAS tool and run the commands you mentioned above and got an error:

 

# intelmas show -intelssd 0

- Intel SSD DC P3600 Series PHMD5485003S400FGN -

Bootloader : 8B1B0133
Capacity : 400.09 GB
CurrentPercent : 100.00
DevicePath : /dev/nvme0n1
DeviceStatus : Healthy
Firmware : 8DV101H0
FirmwareUpdateAvailable : The selected drive contains current firmware as of this tool release.
Index : 0
MaximumLBA : 97677845
ModelNumber : INTEL SSDPE2ME400G4
ProductFamily : Intel SSD DC P3600 Series
SMARTEnabled : True
SectorDataSize : 4096
SerialNumber : PHMD5485003S400FGN

# intelmas delete -force -intelssd 0
Deleting...(This can take several minutes to complete)

- Intel SSD DC P3600 Series PHMD5485003S400FGN -

Status : NVMe command reported a problem.

 

I will try to gather more data and post back... 

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Yoinah1M
Beginner
2,372 Views

@JosafathB_Intel 

To answer your questions:

  1. I have 5 of these SSDs, 4 of them I can reformat fine without any issue, using isdct. only this 1 SSD is having issue.
  2. Here's the SMART output per your instruction above:

 

- SMART Attributes PHMD5485003S400FGN -

- AB -

Action : Pass
Description : Program Fail Count
ID : AB
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0

- AC -

Action : Pass
Description : Erase Fail Count
ID : AC
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0

- AD -

Action : Pass
AverageEraseCycles : 1269
Description : Wear Leveling Count
ID : AD
MaximumEraseCycles : 1277
MinimumEraseCycles : 1262
Normalized : 90
Raw : 5450397189358

- B8 -

Action : Pass
Description : End-to-End Error Detection Count
ID : B8
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0

- C7 -

Action : Pass
Description : CRC Error Count
ID : C7
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0

- E2 -

Action : Pass
Description : Timed Workload - Media Wear
ID : E2
Normalized : 100
Raw : 65535

- E3 -

Action : Pass
Description : Timed Workload - Host Read/Write Ratio
ID : E3
Normalized : 100
Raw : 65535

- E4 -

Action : Pass
Description : Timed Workload Timer
ID : E4
Normalized : 100
Raw : 65535

- EA -

Action : Pass
Description : Thermal Throttle Status
ID : EA
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0
ThrottleStatus : 0 %
ThrottlingEventCount : 0

- F0 -

Action : Pass
Description : Retry Buffer Overflow Count
ID : F0
Normalized : 100
Raw : 0

- F3 -

Action : Pass
Description : PLI Lock Loss Count
ID : F3
Normalized : 100
Raw : 3

- F4 -

Action : Pass
Description : NAND Bytes Written
ID : F4
Normalized : 100
Raw : 688828599762944

- F5 -

Action : Pass
Description : Host Bytes Written
ID : F5
Normalized : 100
Raw : 578953035120640

- F6 -

Action : Pass
Description : System Area Life Remaining
ID : F6
Normalized : 100
Raw : 100
​

 

  • Here's the show -all output, per your instructions:

 

- Intel SSD DC P3600 Series PHMD5485003S400FGN -

AdminPath : /dev/nvme0
AggregationThreshold : 0
AggregationTime : 0
ArbitrationBurst : 0
Bootloader : 8B1B0133
Capacity : 400.09 GB
CoalescingDisable : 1
CurrentPercent : 100.00
DevicePath : /dev/nvme0n1
DeviceStatus : Healthy
DirectivesSupported : False
DisableThermalThrottle : The selected drive does not support this feature.
DynamicMMIOEnabled : The selected drive does not support this feature.
EndToEndDataProtCapabilities : 17
EnduranceAnalyzer : Media Workload Indicators have reset values. Run 60+ minute workload prior to running the endurance analyzer.
ErrorString : Value not found
Firmware : 8DV101H0
FirmwareUpdateAvailable : The selected drive contains current firmware as of this tool release.
FormatNVMCryptoEraseSupported : True
FormatNVMSupported : True
HighPriorityWeightArbitration : 0
IOCompletionQueuesRequested : 30
IOSubmissionQueuesRequested : 30
Index : 0
Intel : True
IntelGen3SATA : False
IntelNVMe : True
InterruptVector : 0
IsDualPort : False
LBAFormat : 3
LatencyTrackingEnabled : False
LowPriorityWeightArbitration : 0
MaximumLBA : 97677845
MediumPriorityWeightArbitration : 0
MetadataSetting : 0
MetadataSize : 0
ModelNumber : INTEL SSDPE2ME400G4
NVMeControllerID : 0
NVMeMajorVersion : 1
NVMeMinorVersion : 0
NVMePowerState : 0
NVMeTertiaryVersion : 0
NamespaceId : 1
NamespaceManagementSupported : False
NativeMaxLBA : 97677845
NumErrorLogPageEntries : 63
NumLBAFormats : 6
NumberOfNamespacesSupported : 1
OEM : Generic
OptionalNVMCompareSupported : False
OptionalNVMDatasetMgmtSupported : True
OptionalNVMReservationsSupported : False
OptionalNVMSaveFieldSupported : False
OptionalNVMTimestampSupported : False
OptionalNVMVerifySupported : False
OptionalNVMWriteUncorrectableSupported : True
OptionalNVMWriteZeroesSupported : False
PCIBus : 68
PCIDevice : 0
PCIDomain : 0
PCIFunction : 0
PCILinkGenSpeed : 2
PCILinkWidth : 4
PLITestTimeInterval : The selected drive does not support this feature.
PhyConfig : The selected drive does not support this feature.
PhySpeed : The selected drive does not support this feature.
PhysicalSectorSize : The selected drive does not support this feature.
PhysicalSize : 400088457216
PowerGovernorAveragePower : Feature is not supported.
PowerGovernorBurstPower : Feature is not supported.
PowerGovernorMode : 0
Product : Middledale
ProductFamily : Intel SSD DC P3600 Series
ProductProtocol : NVME
ProtectionInformation : 0
ProtectionInformationLocation : 0
ReadErrorRecoveryTimer : Device does not support this command set.
SMARTEnabled : True
SMARTHealthCriticalWarningsConfiguration : 0
SMBusAddress : 53
SMI : False
SectorDataSize : 4096
SectorSize : 4096
SelfTestSupported : False
SerialNumber : PHMD5485003S400FGN
SupportCommandEffectsLog : True
TCGSupported : False
TelemetryLogSupported : False
TempThreshold : 85
TemperatureLoggingInterval : The selected drive does not support this feature.
TimeLimitedErrorRecovery : 0
TrimSupported : True
VolatileWriteCacheEnabled : False
WriteAtomicityDisableNormal : 0
WriteCacheReorderingStateEnabled : The selected drive does not support this feature.
WriteCacheState : The selected drive does not support this feature.
WriteErrorRecoveryTimer : Device does not support this command set.

​

 

There's really nothing "unique" about my system. Just plain CentOS7. And as mentioned, the formatting works with 4 out of 5 of these P3600 SSDs, just not this 1 unit. 

Thoughts?

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asam
Beginner
2,132 Views

I am facing the same issue. I have opened a support ticket now.

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